Volleyball Coaching Life-Watching the Women’s CBB Final 4

 I don't usually watch the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four. I watched the Iowa Vs South Carolina game mainly because of the publicity that Caitlin Clark and the South Carolina Gamecocks have garnered for the tournament. Both have brought the game to an excellence that is remarkable; it was a well-played and hard-fought battle.

But it is what happened after the game that made me think. I first thought about the difference I observed because of the women centered leadership and the difference that it made how I perceived the game. Caitlin Clark had a 41 point night, and she had a hand in all of her team's points in the fourth quarter, whether as points scored or as an assist. Her play and the way her game flowed were eye opening and she certainly deserved all the accolades that she is getting and will get in the future. Yet, when she was interviewed by  Holly Rowe of ESPN, she happily deflected the attention that Rowe tried to focus on her individual accomplishments to her teammates. She framed the night in a way that any coach wants to hear from their players and she did it naturally; no false modesty and no pretentions. She emphasized that the success of the team came from her team; they seem like, first and foremost, a team that loved each other unconditionally and they lived and died as a team. Holly Rowe, to her great credit, did not pursue her original line of questions.

As for Dawn Staley, she was obviously disappointed. Her team was the defending national champion, and they had a 42 game-winning streak. She is a great coach and trains her team to play at a very high level. South Carolina also has a team ethos for success, they played  and sacrificed for each other. They just ran into a buzzsaw that's named Iowa. The remarkable thing about Coach Staley’s responses was that she did not flinch when faced with the questions, she did delve into what went wrong; reporters had to ask, because even with South Carolina’s body of work, the reporters had to ask what went wrong. Coach Staley answered those questions, but she also told the press that she had to get back into the locker room because she had to go take care of her team, talk to those individuals who will no longer for the South Carolina Gamecocks because their time with the team is has run out. This is something that we don't hear too much of in sports. Post game press conferences focus on what the teams did or did not do, and on their successes and mistakes. But her focus, even at the end of a loss, was on her players. It was vital to her  to rush away to address her player’s mental welfare post loss ahead of everything else.

I am very sure that most coaches do go through that process internally. I am sure that there are many great coaches who think line Coach Staley. Very few think in terms of these players who were just becoming adults and how they were handling what might be the biggest and most public failure in their lives up to this point. Even if it seems natural to only focus on the failure, is that the right thing to do? Should we not be more concerned about the human beings that we are coaching rather than the results? Collegiate sports are highly competitive, obviously, especially revenue generating sports. The reality is highly competitive and highly volatile for the coaches and their jobs. For a coach to say right now my main concern is my players, especially in that arena with that amount of attention, that is remarkable to me.

The two observations seem to align  with the trite saying: women bond to battle while men battle to bond; that the relationships between players and coaches plays a more significant role in the successes of the teams than we are led to believe. Although the reason I believe the saying is trite is because it is so true. The relationship between players and coaches is a large part of the bonding. It is a natural part of the team experience to build that symbiotic relationship for athletes and coaches. The process of creating a team ethos is an infinitely iterative process of using competition to build relationships and conversely, building relationships to foster competition. In the aftermath of Title IX, I believe that the divide employed by that saying has eroded away and the two conditional statements has become a single biconditional statement which affects everyone: people battle to bond and bond to battle.  

Returning to my original thought: were the two observations I perceived an example of the difference women leadership can make? I don’t know. In my experience with very limited data and considering my completely subjective observations, I believe there is something to it. Although I have no tangible proof.

Consider a broader scope of inquiry, is it possible that the difference in the team culture cultivated by the coaches is the reason for the successes of their teams? Is the difference due to the fact that we have coaches who are more empathetic?

Empathy, as the ability to actually feel what another person is feeling — literally “walk a mile in their shoes” — it goes beyond sympathy, which is  a simple expression of concern for another person’s misfortune.

Even though I have known empathetic men coaches and completely unempathetic women coaches; they are small samples which offers counterexamples to the generalization about men and women. Do those counterexamples completely negate the original hypothesis that women leadership is the difference in what I perceived? I don’t know. I do know that I want to believe in my original hypothesis.

Is empathy a salient characteristic of teams that are led by women, as the head coach of Iowa is also a woman? Is it that empathetic culture which explains how Caitlin Clark is so team oriented? Or is it that she was so empathetic that she thrives in a familiar and welcoming culture? Which raises another question: is the team culture a necessary part of winning? Or turning that question around: is winning a fortunate byproduct of building an empathetic human centered culture?

Winning and losing is the basis of all sporting activities. Coaches do all that they can to prepare the players, they teach and prepare them for the necessary requirements to win tactically, technically, strategically, and physically. Should they also do so personally? Coaches absolutely want to win, but should they put their personal relationship, their mutual trust with their players in the competitive context? Should the coach-player relationship be transactive? Is winning the driving force for their relationship with their players or their teams?

I have seen many coach-player relationships become something that is transactional: I will build a personal relationship with you, if and only if, you do as I say and help us win; with winning taking precedence over the personal relationship. This is my personal observation over years of coaching. I have seen that transactional relationship happen with junior club coaches, with high school coaches, and with college coaches. My caveat is that my perception is exactly that, perceptions; I am not privy to the behind-the-scenes relationships between players and coaches, I can only surmise through my own observations, all based on decisions made and without context.

I have observed coaches make decisions for the benefit of their team results rather than what is best for the player.  Is that the right approach? Is that the wrong approach? For the team? For the individuals?

In terms of my observations of Caitlin Clark and Dawn Staley, we are essentially asking the which came first, the chicken or the egg question: is winning a function of established culture? Or is culture a function of winning? In the short term, do you, as a coach, do what is best for your culture and your relationships with your players and expect success? Or do you lead the team to get the best results at that moment and hope the culture and relationships thrive?

Just some extemporaneous wanderings.